After the Divine Liturgy on December 5, 2010, at the church of the Mother of God, Joy of All Who Sorrow-in-Ordynka, Metropolitan Hilarion, head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s department for external church relations, conducted a commemoration service for His Holiness Patriarch Alexey II who died on this day two years ago.
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After praying fervently that night, St. Katherine fell asleep and dreamt that she was standing before the Virgin and Child. The Child’s face was turned away from her. When His mother asked Him to look at the beautiful girl, He said He wouldn’t until she changed her pagan ways and returned to the holy monk for guidance. Eagerly St. Katherine did so. The monk taught her about the One True God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, and the Saviour of Mankind. St. Katherine soon believed in Jesus Christ with all her heart and was baptized.
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Indeed, spiritual progress can only be made through the Cross, through sacrifice. Wherever there is no sacrifice, there the Church becomes a mere institution, a ritual, an empty form. But where there is sacrifice, martyrdom, the Cross, there is spiritual life.
Metropolitan Laurus (Skurla)
The students of St Paisius were influential among monastics—on the Holy Mountain, in Moldavia and in Russia. Russia was a source of a particularly large number of his students, under whom a broad rebirth of spiritual life occurred, along with interest in and love for the reading and studying of books; elders and monastic superiors came to the fore who preserved the legacy of St Paisius.
Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh
The word ‘angel’ comes from the Greek ‘angelos’, which means ‘a messenger’. As far as we are concerned, in the way in which we are related to the angels, they enter into our life as messengers of God. This does not mean that there is not in the angels an essence of their own, their own essential being, and that they are nothing but messengers. They are related as messengers to us; they are related to God as his own creatures which have already attained a measure of perfection and which grow eternally, endlessly into a deeper and more perfect communion with their Maker.